Afghanistan policy: Obama needs to listen to his generals

President Obama is hearing from widely different viewpoints as he reconsiders his policy on Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants as many as 40,000 additional troops. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden wants to shift our focus elsewhere. In other words, lose.

Let's hope President Obama listens to his senior military leader on the ground and not his vice president.

History has shown us that presidents shouldn't blindly trust their military leaders. But on matters of national security, if you give me a choice of placing my trust in generals or in politicians, I'll usually take my chances with the generals.

McChrystal, in particular, has earned that trust.

The general whose unit captured Saddam Hussein has been open and honest about the war's progress and about what he needs to win it. He got the nation's attention when he wrote in a report to the secretary of defense that, without a change of course, the war could be lost within a year.

He's known for walking the Afghan streets without armor so he can better connect with the locals, and his morning video teleconferences involve hundreds of people at all levels rather than a select few at the top.

He's even shaken up the way the United States and its NATO allies are conducting the war.

Convinced that the collateral damage from air strikes is turning the Afghan people against the effort, he's ordered troops to act with restraint, practically banning air strikes against residential areas even when they are sources of hostile fire.

He needs additional troops in order to effectively combat the Taliban and other insurgents who threaten the gains made by the United States and its NATO allies.

An additional 40,000 would bring the total number to 140,000 — not much less than the 150,000 that were in Iraq after the troop surge that proved so successful, and which Obama voted against as a senator.

Those 40,000 troops won't guarantee victory. But failing to provide them will make defeat a lot more certain.

After eight years, the United States is nowhere near accomplishing its objectives, so it's not surprising that some want to quit. But doing so would enable the return of an Islamic fundamentalist regime that oppressed its own people and supported the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001.

Afghanistan is hard. It is larger in both population and area than Iraq, and its geography, tribal society, and resistance to outsiders have made it impossible to invade, as the mighty Soviet Union learned a few decades ago.

But the United States is not invading. It is working to establish a democratic government so that Afghan society will be marked by smiling voters holding up purple-stained thumbs and not fearful women hiding in their black burkas.

It's a noble effort that so far has claimed the lives of 800 irreplaceable Americans. A competent and trustworthy general has asked for up to 40,000 troops so that they did not die in vain.

Let's give him what he's asked for and, until we're shown otherwise, trust that the power of America's ideals and the valor of its men and women in uniform will lead to victory in the end.